After 5-6 years without a project, I missed working on a car. Cue the 1986 Turbo Z! The sweet digital dash had me hooked. I never thought much of the car as a teen, but the more I considered getting one, the more awesome it became. So I got one with zero knowledge about the Z world.

The car I bought is originally an auto and was in the middle of a manual swap when the owner lost interest. It was a nice'ish 20-footer at the right price, and I'm just a sucker for that two-tone paint.

I made the 4-hour trip out to Georgia, and the seller turns out to be a Z hoarder with 15+ other Z's laid up in his front yard. He had junk eeeverywhere but he was very enthusiastic and seemed knowledgable enough. The clearcoat was half buffed off in an abandoned re-spray idea, and while there was no rust, the frame rails and pinch welds were (not unexpectedly) mangled. Once I agreed to take the car, he had to rummage through piles and piles of parts in his garage gathering things for my car from memory. Not a good sign but whatever. He placed the engine in to the engine bay a few days prior for the sake of transportation. The transmission and other random bits went in my SUV. I drew blood about 10 minutes into ownership when I slipped on gravel trying to push the car up the trailer. Good times.

Once home, all I needed to do to drive it was finish the swap and add fluids. This was going to be a cheap putter-around project, and I'll be enjoying the wind, T-tops off, in no time.

Yeah, not by a long shot. I've quintupled my original budget. The car continues to be one thing after another, but I'm staying positive. After some time with the car and having never been in a Z, you can tell it was very special to Nissan. The details, the electronics, and other goodies just ooze coolness: the driver-adjustable dampers, the headrest crests, the dash, the crazy seats, etc. The 240SX had nothing on this. Judging from photos, even a Skyline's interior is comparatively dumpy






[Edited on July 21, 2025 at 11:17 AM. Reason : ]

7/21/2025 11:16:40 AM

Quote :

"I drew blood about 10 minutes into ownership"

7/21/2025 10:19:13 PM

nice!

looks like a fun project

7/22/2025 9:57:05 AM

two pics?

7/23/2025 3:40:49 PM

Early on, I dealt some of the usual headaches that come with a 40-year-old car: a locked brake caliper, rear brake pads, new Eibach Pro Kit springs with Koni yellows, brake fluid flush, etc

When I got around to checking out the "freshly-sealed" engine which simply needed to be installed and fluids added, I found... sludge and baked-in oil all over the valvetrain.



I pull the engine and disassemble everything, and I take the longblock to the machine shop. My original intention is to have them clean, machine, and assemble the bottom end. For the top end, just clean and machine and I will assemble. Well they didn't like that idea with all the clearances involved and convinced me to let them put the entire thing together. A week or two go by and we cannot find +0.020" hardware for the engine. The shop's standard practice is to bore no matter what the bores look like. You can go aftermarket forged or a mish-mash of Z32 (90'+ 300ZX) parts for +0.020, but I wanted to keep it as cheap and straightforward as possible. The shop is straight up Good Ole Boys. 1980's garage, dirt floor, no A/C, blocks sitting around EVERYWHERE, grease stains and prints on every surface, thousand-page machine reference books, cigarette smoke lingering in the air, etc. But I work with guys like this, and I can shoot the shit easily. They all come around just fine

Weeks goes by with no development on finding parts. I check FB marketplace for all my options: aftermarket pistons, running engines, etc. BOOM! Someone is selling a newly-shop-built VG30ET (my factory engine), fully-built internals + cams, along with some other project goodies. They include a 350Z transmission with adapter bellhousing and a ton of new parts:
Walbro fuel pump
Aeromotive FPR
Fidanza flywheel
McLeod clutch kit
Nistune ECU with harness
intercooler kit
high-dollar exhaust manifolds
3" downpipe
high-dollar intake manifold
42lb/hr (440cc/min) injectors
Turbosmart wastegate
etc

I jumped on it after considering the price for it all against the price of new pistons and rods (required) plus machine work. "Cheap" is out the window now. I retrieve all my parts from the machine shop and leave with a ~$100 invoice because they already line-bored the block. No problem.

It turns out I'd need to find a mounting solution for the clutch slave cylinder, fork pivot, etc and get a custom driveshaft to make the 350Z trans work, so I dismissed the idea pretty early on.

The project sits and sits for long spells because 1. family schedule 2. I'm lazy and always waiting for mild weather or the next excuse.

[Edited on July 24, 2025 at 12:35 PM. Reason : ]

7/24/2025 12:08:34 PM

Quote :

"sits and sits for long spells"

[Edited on July 24, 2025 at 12:16 PM. Reason : ]

7/24/2025 12:16:16 PM

Let's see that sweet digital dash.

7/24/2025 3:08:37 PM

bam!

7/25/2025 8:16:36 PM

My dash leather/rubber was cracked aaaall to hell. While the new engine sat idly on its stand, I removed the dash, neatly cut off about 80% of the rubber, walnut-blasted and painted the metal, and let a dash mat cover the rest.

Upon reinstalling, a little light bulb and its harness got caught between the dash and the windshield. When I tried to give the dash a little nudge, this happened FFFFFFFFFFFF



Replacing it is low-ish priority for now. I want to get the car running reliably first.

7/25/2025 8:23:54 PM

After months of procrastinating, I kick it in to high gear this Spring. After figuring out which clutch bits go on the car, I mount the flywheel, clutch, PP, etc. I have the car seller's used clutch kit, a brand new clutch kit I bought, a new clutch kit which came with the new engine, AND a 350Z clutch kit which also came with the new engine. Keep in mind that I'm taking the time to wire brush every bolt that I use from here on out.

I roll the car in to the car port, dust off all my gear, and get the engine in to the car. Cue all the associated difficulties and cussing.

Transmission time. No transmission jack means the trans is teeter tottering on the little 6" floor jack cup the entire time. Lots more cussing but it finally slides in. Whew, bolt it up and try the shifter! The shifter DOES NOT SHIFT. I can't even move it side to side. The slave cylinder pushes the PP back and forth as it should. Clutch in, I can turn the engine over by hand; clutch out, I can't. W T F I remove the transmission and recheck all the clutch components to make sure nothing is binding. I double check that I chose the correct parts; they're all good. Reinstall the trans; same thing. Fine, let's tear down the transmission:




FUCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKK YOOOOOUUUUU. Is that MF'ing fungus?! The damn shift selectors were seized together, among other things.

But it's a T5 transmission found in a bunch of other cars. It should be easy to find, right? Nope, it's got odd size shafts, spline counts, etc. After dismissing the idea of buying another 40-year old transmission for $500+, I study up on how to rebuild it. The gears themselves are in good shape: no shearing or chipping. $300 in parts later, it's rebuilt. It's notchy as hell to shift, but my old boss says his Foxbody is the same way. OK moving on.

I remount the trans. Reminder: the car was halfway through a manual swap. I grab the driveshaft and insert it in to the trans. THE YOKE DOESN'T FUCKING GO IN. It's the wrong god-damned driveshaft. Even if it did go in to the T5 trans, the diff end was different from my diff flange. Fine then, it had a bunch of slop anyways. $400 for a brand new one.

What a damn nightmare under the car.

[Edited on July 25, 2025 at 9:07 PM. Reason : ]

7/25/2025 9:00:02 PM

I wanted to change out the fuel pump for the Walbruh that came with my new engine. Fighting with a stinky 40 year old fuel tank will be fun, no doubt.

The fuel pump requires the tank to be dropped. I have to remove the fuel sender though the trunk first. 2 out of the 4 wires have broken at their solder joints OK I'll just solder those back later. I transfer all the fuel out in to two buckets. One bucket went straight in to the lawnmower and the other bucket became a very useful parts cleaner.

I decided the filler neck was too dirty and too much work to deal with so I unbolted the neck's flange from the tank. With my fancy 2x4" on a floor jack contraption, I got the tank out with surprisingly little fuss. The tank wasn't rusty, thank goodness, but it had some nice fungal-looking growth. I cleaned everything I could reach.

I misjudge exactly how the fuel pump connections work and mangle one up. After a few back-to-the-drawing board moments, I had my final assembly ready to go back in.

I tackle the re-soldering of the fuel sender unit. The "bobber" has little metal fingers that run up a rail with conductors placed in a very specific pattern. In trying to clean a spot near the original soldering points, I managed to wipe away about 1/2" of this very thin conducor layer. FML. After an hour of attempted soldering, I destroyed another 1/2."

I Google "how to solder on to large flat metal" thinking it's a heat issue. I stumble across the fact that I need special solder and flux The ole rosin-core solder and Oatey flux of mine don't cut it. I order some and it takes me seconds to get the wires reattached. Now since the bobber dropped right out when I disassembled the sender, I reinstalled it using the one single photo I could find as a reference. 50/50 chance. Between the removal of some conductor and the fact that the bobber COULD be backwards, I show a half tank at fill-up and I'm empty about 10 miles later The system consists of the shoddy sender and a PCB before going to the gauge cluster. Instead of dealing with all that, I've got a marine sender and gauge coming the mail right this moment.

It turns out I should have undone the fuel neck rather than mess with the neck-to-tank flange. That thing was a biiiiitch to line up and try not to strip the little M5 bolts. I pipe-wrenched it with a rag to twist as needed.

ALL RIGHT LETS PRIME THIS BITCH

It primes... all the way to 80 PSI wtf. It goes to 100 PSI on 2nd prime. God damn it. I had to let the pressure settle overnight. I adjust the adjustable FPR until the set screw has come waaay out. No change. I look over all my fuel lines: all correctly placed and no kinks. I let the pressure settle down again.

I start looking for clogged fuel return lines between the FPR and the tank. FPR to metal tubing line was good (brand new). Metal tubing to tank line was GOD DAMN I HAVE TO DROP THE TANK TO GET MY HAND IN THERE. This time I leave the filler neck bolted to the tank. The tubing-to-tank line was clear. WTF it's somewhere in the fuel pump assembly.

The fuel pump assembly was F'ing clogged in the metal return tube going to the bottom of the tank. Remember that I made this pump assembly from a mish mash of two assemblies. This particular tube had been sitting out in the yard and some wasp or bug must have made a mud nest in the damn thing. My electric pressure washer couldn't budge it nor could I fish a wire through the bends. I couldn't use the tube from the other assembly because it's welded to the piece with the connectors I mangled up. I ended up cutting the metal tube short and installing a piece of fuel rated hose to make up the distance lost.

Reinstall, set to 40 PSI. Done.

8/7/2025 2:06:56 PM

Haven't caught all the way up yet, but so far this is A+ posting

8/7/2025 9:36:03 PM

LOOOVE THIS, give me more details and updates please!

9/6/2025 12:27:35 AM

This is awesome.

9/25/2026 7:06:31 AM

What an awesome read (at the same time, sorry for your misfortunes).

So how's it all going now? Is it running? Or did you "dispose" of it in a random rock quarry

10/21/2026 7:09:06 PM

There's a lot to update. I'll run through my parts purchases and hit on the main highlights.

The steering rack was leaking badly, so in all my wisdom, I opt to re-seal the thing myself. Well, steering racks have a rigid plastic ring of some sort (PTFE?) and I manage to mangle it up on first attempt. $40 gone in the blink of an eye OK F a rebuild.

I buy a new rack. Keep in mind that these sorts of parts for this car are in short supply. Remanufacturers are regularly out of stock on things like racks, brake calipers, etc. Turns out, these Z's came with 2 racks and you kind of "get what you get." The replacement one was different from mine, OF COURSE, and I can't use my old rack bushings. "Hey 240sx bushings work." $25 later, no the hell they don't. I buy the latest and greatest poly bushings (twice ) and the car still feels really sloppy. Turns out, the rack+bushings were sliding left and right because the mounting brackets didn't have enough bite. A few trials later, I ended up with aluminum spacer strips between the bushings and metal brackets. It stopped 90+ % of the movement.

[Edited on October 22, 2026 at 3:24 PM. Reason : Never disposing now!]

10/22/2026 3:24:07 PM

During a lull in development, I decide to go over the harness and Nistune ECU I received with the new engine. I get out all the FSM crap and start checking continuity, cleaning things, repairing nasty bends, etc. About an hour into it, line colors stop matching up. WTF is going on?? My colors correspond to... a MF'ing analog-gauge car and cannot be used in my car!! And there's no way I'm going analog. The digital dash was half my reason for this project!

OK so now I'm looking into de-soldering and moving the Nistune to my car's original ECU. Nistunes are from an era where you literally solder a chip(s) and wires onto your factory ECU board.

Everyone's saying "well you can do that buuuuut they ARE 40-year old ECUs so it's kind of a crap shoot. Nistune is not a modern thing and it'll be difficult to get support." After some consideration...

$2000 plug and play MegaSquirt Gold Box, ka-ching! It's been a while now and I don't remember anything going sideways with the install. The tuning was the most annoying part. It turns out that when you run too rich, AFRs read lean.

"A wideband O2 sensor does not measure fuel; it measures leftover oxygen. Because free oxygen is present in the unburnt exhaust, the wideband reports a lean condition"

I didn't really look into it because the car was only problematic after cold start. It would really buck and lurch the car in the first mile or so if you didn't use the throttle juuuust right. After I learned about the rich/lean thing, I was able to fix it right up.

10/22/2026 3:38:52 PM

I added a used BMW 2-wire idle air control valve. Under testing, it didn't close all the way. You get anywhere from "a little bit open" and "a lot open." I installed and tuned. The Internet doesn't have consistent answers for whether or not it should be able to close completely, so I bought a new one (China special) just to be sure. It did the same thing so I just left my used one on the car.

I tune and fine-tune for weeks. My fuel map keeps needing changes. One day AFRs will be perfect after auto-tuning. The next day, the AFRs are all out of whack again on the same map and I have to auto-tune again. I tried a few things: sealed up intercooler piping leaks, wastegate flange leaks, etc but nothing truly fixed the problem. My wife tunes with me. My daughter tunes with me. My son tunes with me. On and on. I didn't give the IACV much thought because on a MAP sensor setup like mine, more/less air should be accounted for whether I blew an IC hose coupler, blew an intake vacuum line, or max boost the thing.

Well for whatever reason, IACV was the culprit the entire time. I installed my China-special IACV on a whim and *bam* no more daily auto-tunes... I still don't know WHY it worked since my MAP reasoning still applies.

10/23/2026 2:54:04 PM

The side-to-side play on the factory turbocharger was a little sloppy from the get-go. I kept an eye on it for the first few hundred miles, and it never got worse.

Again it's been a while, so I can't remember what prompted me to re-check it (spool time? spin-down nosie?), but at some point, I found the turbocharger was completely shot Crazy side-to-side impeller play. In removing the turbo from the car, I found that the guy who sold me the engine used an oil restrictor for ball bearing turbos. This old 80's turbo is journal bearing and requires all the oil a pump can throw at it.

In the Z world, there is a famous shop in Arizona who will rebuild factory turbos for $200 plus shipping back and forth. I looked up the local turbocharger shop, brought them my two turbochargers with the intention to have them Frankenstein them into one, and they quoted $650.

So...
~$300 for a stock turbo rebuild
~$650 for a stock turbo rebuild done locally
~$650 for a brand new, legit brand dual ball bearing GT3076R that can do 350+ whp all day long

Weeell, I already had the Megasquirt by this time so what the hell. I bought the GT3076R. The Z uses a proprietary 7 bolt flange, so I went with a V-band outlet which required me to get my downpipe modified.

I measured everything, jotted down the new design, and brought the dp and new hardware to the local 5.0-rated welding shop whose owner proceeded to do a booger-ific job on the thing. Well it fit as needed, so I stuck with it. I showed my boy at work and he was like "duuuude you should just ask me next time. I can weld circles around that." He can, too. I had meant to ask him first, but he's a real busy body. I figured it'd be 2+ weeks before we found some time to get down to the shop.

The new turbocharger goes in and it makes all sorts of woooonderful turbo noises I was considering the option to add a T51R compressor housing mod when I bought it, but the standard housing has the right amount of noises.

10/23/2026 3:23:23 PM

When I got the new engine, I had to bolt up all the accessories.

The old owner spent a pretty penny on the custom intake and exhaust manifolds, so I was pretty stoked to get them installed. I've always hated working with aftermarket fuel rails, and I was expecting an afternoon of cussing. I sure was right.

The intake manifold was too short by 1~2 mm. I couldn't get it sealed flat on the heads without crushing the injectors. I contacted the old owner who said that as far as he knows, the mani did not come with a special spacer of any kind. I looked up the manifold online and again, no special spacer/gasket mentioned.

After going down more hours of rabbit holes, I found that Bosch EV6/EV14 top-feed injectors come in a variety of lengths. The guy had bought his from a Z site, so I assume the injectors would fit if using a factory intake manifold with aftermarket fuel rails. Unfortunately, I'm not in that boat, but you bet your ass I thought long and hard about using my factory mani.

In the end, I bought new Bosch injectors with a bit more flow (new 550cc/52lb vs old 440cc/42lb), and fitment-wise, they worked like a charm. I still hate aftermarket fuel rails and their janky mounting systems.

The 42lb injectors have been on FB marketplace for months now and every bit of interest has been for 8 injectors, not 6 I tell them they can buy my 6 for a steal and buy 2 elsewhere but they're not trying to do all that work.

[Edited on October 23, 2026 at 3:44 PM. Reason : ]

10/23/2026 3:42:25 PM

On FB marketplace, I sold the 350Z Fidanza flywheel and 350z clutch kit I wasn't going to use. The buyer and I shot the shit on FB Messenger for a bit; he's a cool dude.

That week, he drove all the way from Asheville to pick it up. He had scheduled lift time at his buddy's shop that Friday to get it done. Friday evening, I get the dreaded message... "dude, the flywheel doesn't frickin' fit!"

I apologized profusely and refunded him his money plus some extra for his trouble. The damn thing was for MY engine (VG30ET). I even looked it up when making the FB listing, but somehow I missed it WTF. The guy took it pretty well and even shipped it back to me lol. Good times.

10/23/2026 4:03:35 PM

Wow what a flurry of disasters. Keep the faith!

10/26/2026 3:45:22 PM